Thursday, August 13, 2009

Spoiler Warnings. Seems Diamond Distributors has spoiled the party on who the big bad behind Blackest Night is. I'll refrain from posting the image here, but you can find it on Diamond's page or at this ImageShack link if Diamond eventually takes it down. All I can say is, good job DC and Diamond on this one.

DC chose/allowed it to be on the cover of PREVIEWS, which will be out before the third issue of BLACKEST NIGHT as it is. This would have been revealed in the solicitations in a week anyway, so who cares?

@Rawnzilla - Ya, he's been pretty much the only guess for most people for a while. I honestly hoped it wouldn't be, as he doesn't quite line up with it, but I imagine Johns will just use selective continuity to fit him in and then build him up significantly, much like he does with many older villains.

@Anonymous - I don't particularly care about spoilers. A good story is a good story. If you need a reveal or catch to make it good or the story is worse after knowing, you're probably M Night Shyamalan. I just consider this a massive slip up from a PR perspective. This could have been a) revealed in issue 2 with Scar or someone mentioning him by name, b) been revealed in an exclusive to CBR or whoever from Johns or c) press released by DC in a more formal setting. It just reflects poorly on them in my opinino when a major event is spoiled in a Previews magazine cover blurb.

@Anonymous - If it wasn't a screwup, Diamond would not have taken the cover image down. Obviously someone told them not to. I'd imagine IGN had an exclusive of some sort for it and either had it scheduled to go up today or was allowed to publish it early since the news was released early by Diamond.

I find this interesting because it means they are not doing the "big reveal" or the "big bad" on the final page of the penultimate issue. Like said, Diamond probably took down the image because IGN had the exclusive, not because it spoiled the series.

DC/Johns may have done this because a)Johns just didn't want the big bad's reveal to be a big deal, b) they realized that a lot of people had guessed it and said screw it, let's just confirm it or c) it's misdirection and there's still a big reveal of some kind coming. Remember the SCW where they showed Kyle Rayner as Parallax at a con to throw people off the Anti-Monitor's return. In any case, that's a pretty mean looking dude.

@kwaku - Well, there was a recent interview where Johns mentioned that the Anti-Monitor wasn't "happy" imprisoned in the power battery. Maybe he busts out and actually saves people or becomes the actual big bad again for this arc.

Anti-Monitor as a hero? Nice concept. As long as they don't get into the Monitors of Countdown/Final Crisis, I'll be cool with that. Or maybe a "Battle of the Villains" pitting this guy versus the Anti-Monitor, and the heroes on the sidelines trying to stop the destruction of everything we hold dear (I hope not, because they'd probably toss Mandrakk in there or something).

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